Some new foshizzle fo my nizzles

Ok so heres the Pyre and Scythes in all thier glory. What you've seen previous for some of the Pyres and Scythes were show samples... so here is the first full on dialed stuff. Pictures worth a 1000 words so I'll shutup now.

Merry Merry Merry Christmas!!!!

to everyone that reads this, happy holidays from all of us with banshee!!! now go ride a bike!

Demo Banshee's thru RBikes.com

We've been talking with Mike at Richards for awhile about finally getting this going and we are
very pleased to be to have it available for the 2008 season.

Currently we only have the Rune to demo but as the 08 bikes arrive we should have more available in a range of models and sizes. The fleet will be around 20-30 bikes and in a few months they will have them all.
The cool thing is Richards will ship anywhere in the USA for a customer to try before they buy.
A nominal fee [$200] will go towards the purchase if the customer decides to keep it.

Make sure you check out their site if your interested to learn more. Rbikes.com

Merry freakin Christmas!!!

So I know its not Christmas-y with the hohoho and the bells and that junk but I took this sweet azz pic of the North Shore. So from the home of the Shore, I know I speak for everyone one at Banshee... have a great holiday and try to sneak in a ride - say its to work off the bird you just ate. If Christmas ain't how you roll in your house we still hope you had a great year and wish you the best for the next one.

Lets step it up next year guys and gals... bigger, stronger, faster, better. That road gap at Whistler... I'm comin' for you byatch.
22PRiDe
Jay

Mythic Wildcard being tested by MBUK

I've just had word that MBUK has put my Mythic Wildcard into a group test called "All Mountain Big Hitters" which will go into the magazine issue due out in March 2008


With a sensible build of high end parts, tubeless tire setup and bike weight under 35lb I am sure it will fare well alongside the other bikes for climbing and trail riding, and as we know, the Wildcard will certainly be up for some serious abuse


Not sure what other bikes are being tested alongside the Wildcard, but we'll find out for sure when the magazine comes out


Early feedback on the Wildcard is positive, but alot can happen in a group test so lets wait and see


cheers!


Rob C

Wildcard in DirtBiker Magazin

In last issue of Dirtbiker Magazine (Czech bike magazine) in year 2007 was presented my brand new bike for year 2008. Banshee Wildcard.



Here is (probably) the final version:

Frame: Banshee Wildcard M size
Fox DHX 5 coil
Fork: Rock Shox Domain U-turn 115-160 mm in mint green

Bars:Spank Bitch Stick cutted to 640 mm
Grips: Spank
Stem: Funn Thrilla 40 mm
Head set: Da Bomb reduction from 1.5 to 1 1/8“.

Crank set: Race Face Evolve DH X-Type
Chain ring 36T Gebhardt
Pedals: Free For Ride low profile, SB

Brakes: Shimano LX 203mm front disc, 180mm rear disc
Rims: Spank Subrosa
Hubs: Novatec
Tires: Maxxis Minion 2.35, hard compoud, rear is reinforced.


I have also a picture (and a poster) in this issue in article about Austria bikeparks Saalbach and Leogang.



Drop in Leogang bikepark

New Website goes live

Update: 12/18 ... ok its fully up check it

We will be adding more content as time goes by but for the most part the nuts and bolts are done. HUGE props and gratitude to Ken at XXIV for all his work on creating it. Will update the URL when we upload it to the server so you're getting a peak before it goes live... working on it right now too.

Alan's Wildcard weighs in at 32.12lbs

I want to confirm the weight so I've asked him to take a pic of the bike on a proper scale. Even still, if it was embellished a little 33 or even 34 is a respectable weight -I did make sure he weighed it with the chain on.

Alan took pics of himself building it up and is that a hammer I see on the table? ...always a good sign of a quality wrench -the only thing missing is an axe.

Some really awesome features that really show this is a TRUE slopestyle machine and not just a freeride bike posing as a slopestyle ride is its single speed ...check out the sic Yess chaintensioner.
Alan did mention that he got to rip on it and said its noticably lighter, saving weight on the rear derailleur, shifter pods and on the rear cassette. He also appreciated the lower BB height and was really happy about how well it pedalled. Overall I think his game has just stepped it up a few notches.
Expect to see a complete review from him soon and less video clips of his flipwhips and corks to leatherarse hahaha.
Really cool thing is that the components on the frame are all really strong and meant for some big air riding so its not that Alan screwed around and threw a bunch of XC stuff on there just to hit the weight... oh and the frame is a medium size and there is still room to go even lighter with this thing and still have it slopestyle worthy... Sub 30lbs slopestyle bike?

Oh and Chris is still killing the same prototype hes had since last spring so its plenty strong, although he's due for a proper production one in the next few weeks.

Kens Rune off to AMB

Ken from XXIV finished up the build and she's a real beut.

Now its off to AMB magazine in Australia for a major test and it looks like it will be tested in a head to head shoot out with the Santa Cruz Nomad and the Intense 6.6. That's definitely going against some of the heavy weights in the industry. We'll have to see how the review turns out but I'm very confident. Unfortunately the review won't be coming out until March.

I'll update on the weight but I know Ken didn't go with tubeless and the rubber is wire bead. With the Funn DH cranks on there initially, and a few other things that are more suited to Freeride and DH, the Rune was coming in at what he said was 16.1 kg or 35.4 lbs. With the changes he made I expect it to be 32 -33 something and its been built right now for descents. I figure a normal range for this bike in an All Mountain set up will hover around the 30-32 mark.

Pics of the Banshee Amp prototype jump frames

Fresh after the clear coat!



jay writes: "well its what everyone said they wanted. All raw with no decals... I did however want one strategically placed on the inside of the non-driveside chainstay. It looks pretty trick like that...

Greg at Straitline stole my post so I'm stealing his

Greg from Straitline has been pulling stuff of my blog rather then writing his own so I figured I'd return the favor... ya bastard!!! hahaha
Its been pretty rainy here... as you can see by Monkey Greg riding the fork lift. The pics I will use to blackmail him as the Workers Compensation Board wouldn't' be to stoked to see them. Greg if you're reading this you have to pay for a halfhour for me in the Champagne room in Vegas next year.

"Once all of the fire crackers ran out during a power outage last week, the guys thought it would be funny to park my van in the middle of a nasty storm puddle.
Funny at first but I wasn't going to walk through the disease filled brown run off water, it can rust there till summer. Finally Dennis got sick of my bitching and gave me a lift.
Then I sessioned the puddle dry !"

Alans new Wildcard

Finally Alan Hepburn just got his new Wildcard. I like to do something for the factory guys and Alan's got Grant Allen painting him a Troy Lee Carbon in a similar color and paint scheme. Kinda like how Chris's helmet was white and black we did his Wildcard to match his helmet.
I think it turned out pretty great. I told Alan to send me some pics of him building it up... and then the final bike finished.

Rune off to review and some fresh meat - Italy forum

Check out one of the Italian forums... they've got some of the bikes built up that you've not seen yet like the all red wildcard

http://www.bike-board.de/community/forum/showthread.php?p=1705913

Ken from XXIV our distributor in Oz, is building up a Rune to go to ...
Australian Mountain Bike magazine. He said, 'Whats really cool is it will be in a shootout with a Santa Cruz Nomad, and Intense 6.6'. Definitely will be posting up the results. He's building it up with Industry 9 wheels with red spokes, red Straitline pedals, Shimano Hone drivetrain with a black Gamut P30 bash ring. Not the lightest build possible but we'll get the weight before it goes off to the mag, and try to get Ken to do a quick review on his thoughts about his first ride on the bike.

The Genius behind the Legend Mk 1 and other Banshee logos

When we were creating the new Banshee bikes, we started with trying to figure out what would appeal to the rider. Being a smaller company without "money-guys" or "bean-counters" dictating what we could or could not do really helps to when it comes to the creative process when figuring out how to represent the bikes in an asthetic sense.
Considering Keith is such a numbers guy I was surpised at how well he was able to come up with names that really captured the essence of the bikes... I think he named more then 5 of them.
It started with us brainstorming what the bike meant, the vibe it gave off, the soul at its very core. Isn't a bike more then a bunch of aluminium tubes? how can something that is so cool, and make grown adults act like little excited preschoolers be nothing more... they must have a soul.

Ran Berko... is the guys who was able to climb inside my brain and pull out how I imagined what the soul of the bike would look like. From my extremely vague descriptions he was able to come up with the perfect graphics.
As Ran explains after discussing the soul of the bike it was time to look for sources for inspiration.
"The process on creating the legend icon:
The concept, as me and Jay spoke about, was to create an icon

with glory, fame, historic and legendary. We spoke about the image t hat have connection to knight's and hero's.
Well the first thing I started doing was to search for images and then creating something like an inspiration board. In this case I searched for shields and sword's and then started to move to Vikings images and Vikings helmets.
I found a very strong image that really works well with the concept.
I saw a lot of eagles wings that are structure of the eagles wings appear in the knight image, and as a result I succeeded to combine the two into an abstract form of legend and hero." says Ran

Not only an amazing graphics guy, Ran will be rocking this year on a Rampant 4X in his native Israel

Alan and Chris

Chris and Alan did some filming with Christian and Nick from Sullivanvizual. I'll get some more details as soon as I talk to them again. I'll find out when the DVD will be released and where you can get it.
As Grant Allen would say it looks like they got the the corkflip to leatherARSE figured out in the clip they sent me.


Alan just got his new ride and as soon as he takes a pic of it you'll be able to see his new Wildcard. Grant is going to do a custom paint on Alans TLD carbon helmet - provided he gets one for christmas - that will match the bike.

The guys are also featured in the Aussie magazine Revolution and there is a wicked shot from the Pirate aka Stephen Hillenbrand but i don't see it posted on the pirates site yet... other eye candy to look at tho

pinkbike.com

Scott Alleyn's a shameless self promoter but a really good rider. Check out the video of the day, VOD on pinkbike.com
Its funny to see the comments... people seem to think he rides very much like the Claw. I guess there's worse guys to be compared to - like me - hahaha

Freebike's Francesco's Fun... on the Wildcard

Updated
Nick from Italy sent me this link http://www.free-bike.net/photo/offroad/riding/ of our distributor Freebike and Francesco [owner] taking his Wildcard out for a rip. I'll be getting review from him soon but from the looks of it, he seems pretty comfortable on this bike. http://www.free-bike.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=57



Update: 12/5/07
So you’ve seen my video and you can guess I’m not one hell of a rider….but it’s 9 year now I’m doing freeride so I can pretty say I know something about bikes and how a bikes must ride. My last Banshee was a Chaparral 2007 with fox dhx coil and fox 36 front.
Well the wildcard is a completely different bike. Where to start: weight my wildcard is 16,5 kg ( 36,4 lbs) just as it is: lyric coil, mavic dee max tubeless with maxxis minion dh 2,5’’ tyres, dhx 5.0 coil built up with sram x.5, truvativ huss cranks, avid code 5 brakes. Is a 15’’. I’m 6,1’’ tall and feel it perfect for me. The new wildcard is 2 kg less than my old chaparral, it has a lower front end longer wheelbase and lower bottom bracket keeping everything together it has more room to shift my body position from handlebar to the saddle.
On the ride side all those different characteristics give the bike a really different handling: the bike is easier to put in the air ( the main example is that on the first jump you see in the video, 30 foot long, I can roll in to the kick slower than my previous bike, I still use 32x13 shift but I erase 2 pedals before the kick!!!), has a stability on fast section that is unusual to every past Banshee model, rails on corner (you’ve seen on video lots of berm) with such a precision and shape that really impressed me. Overall this bike is fast, really fast, on tight corner, berms it really flows from a jump to another. And yes!.. it’s my pourpose to use it as an allround freeride bike, not just as a slopestyle bike, and believe me it’s perfect for this mission.
The rear suspension is quite different from previous banshee faux bar: I feel it softer on small bumps but without suffering of any harsh bottom out on hard landings. Keith has done a great work perfecting the ‘’old’’ banshee suspension system. And, at the end, the quality of welding, paint has really grown up.
Pretty proud of this bike also because, and you haven’t seen on the video, at the end of the day I was forced to pedal up the hill for 20 minutes to bring back my car and the wildcard just climb better than my legs!!!

22PRIDE

Legend Mk1 ... 50 riders selected

It didn't take long...
We managed to fill the list in around 3 weeks and have a great range of racers from different backgrounds, skill levels, and countries.
What the selected riders do share is they are all competitive racers and I am really happy with the diversity of the bunch. We've got 4 riders that went to the World Championship, another 6 or 7 which are champions in their own countries; and we have no less then 6 engineers that will be racing this bike.
All will be giving us valuable information that we can use to refine the frame to the nth detail.

On average if these racers only ride in 5 races, it will amount to about 250 races total for one season collectively. This doesn't include any practicing, and other runs so there will be a tremendous amount data flowing back to us. We'll track the comments and if we notice a trend then we'll investigate making a geo change.

When we feel we've gotten everything dialed a year from now [2 seasons.. north hemisphere and south ie Australia] we'll produce 100 for public consumption.

Remember before the 50 racers even get their frames we'll have already spent 2 and a half years developing this bike in the computer with numerous revisions, and FEA modeling. Prototypes will also have been ridden and destroyed in the lab. So thats 3 and a half years before the bike is even ready for sale... this way if you decide to buy the bike you won't have to be the guinea pig.
The Goal: to make the fastest bike, without consideration to sales.